[ ABOUT ]
Our mission is to build technologies that protect people.
[ THE WHY ]
Founding story
“ Bureaucracies finding solutions in other bureaucracies leads to decade-long engagements with no guarantees. VC-funded startups build on feeble foundations. There had to be an alternative. “
Australians have a long history of expeditionary engagements — military and humanitarian. It was disaster relief that changed the way I see the world. Not through idealism, but through proximity to what happens when systems meet conditions they were never designed to survive.
Years of research and physical making produced one. 308 is a new legal and operating framework that lets smaller organisations build together, retain their own IP, and share equitably in what they create. An open skunks model — paying homage to Lockheed's program, but focused on the development and proliferation of technologies that protect us all. In or out of uniform. In our homes in Australia, or in a land abroad.
— Ben Andronicus
308 Founder
[ PERSPECTIVES ]
The voices below aren't endorsements. They're reference points — ideas that have shaped how we think about sovereignty, obligation, resilience, and the responsibility that comes with building for people who don't get to choose whether the systems around them work.
They span heads of state, conflict reporters, strategists, and scholars. They don't agree with each other on everything. That's the point. 308 doesn't operate from a single doctrine. We draw from a broad base of thought — centrist, pluralist, and grounded in the observable world — because the problems we work on don't respect ideological boundaries.
The thinking behind the work
Richard N. Haas
Former President of the
Council of Foreign Relations
“ A democracy that concerns itself only with protecting and advancing individual rights will find itself in jeopardy, as rights will come into conflict with one another. When they inevitably do, it is essential that there is a path for citizens to compromise or a willingness to coexist peacefully and work with those with whom they disagree. Beyond rights, obligations are the other cornerstone of a successful democracy — obligations between individual citizens as well as between citizens and their government. Obligations — akin to what Danielle Allen calls habits of citizenship — are things that should happen but that the law cannot require. ”
“ The upward course of a nation’s history is due in the long run to the soundness of the heart of its average men and women. “
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II
1926-2020
“ I don’t believe you can see what’s beyond the edge unless you put your head over it. I’ve many times been right up to the precipice, not even a foot or an inch away. That’s the only place to be if you’re going to see and show what suffering really means. “
Don McCullin
1926-2020
John F. Kennedy
1926-2020
“ I really don't know why it is that all of us are so committed to the sea, except I think it's because in addition to the fact that the sea changes, and the light changes, and ships change, it's because we all came from the sea. And it is an interesting biological fact that all of us have, in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea — whether it is to sail or to watch it — we are going back from whence we came. “
David Kilcullen
Former Lieutenant Colonel
in the Australian Army
“ Rather than focusing on stability (a systems characteristic that just isn’t present in the urban ecosystems we’re examining here), we might be better off focusing on resiliency — helping actors in the system become better able to resist shocks, bounce back from setbacks, and adapt to dynamic change. Instead of trying to hold back the tide, we should be helping people learn to swim. “
Sultan Qaboos bin Said Al Said
1940-2020
“ I and my people who have, ourselves, fought through many bitter years of struggle to maintain our country's freedom — and will do so again should the need ever arise — are deeply conscious of this, for we know from our own experience that peace must go hand in hand with dignity and freedom; that life, if it is to be worth living, can only be founded on justice and respect for humanity and that these prizes are not easily won or preserved.
I believe that the world has never stood in greater need for these values than it does today. In recent years, the forces of aggression, intolerance, and lawless ambition have increasingly sought to impose their will on mankind. The world has had no respite from the continuing threat of instability. ”
Photo: Gage Skidmore, 2020.
Jim Mattis
Former US Secretary
of Defence
“ But doctrine is the last refuge of the unimaginative “
